JCC Floor Hockey

 

Juranka's Corner

wow another hockey day (Feb 17, 2003)

right when i thought i had seen it all
my self-image changed
over one evening of ball hockey

at the beginning of this year i was one of the
few veteran goalies and i thought i was hot

and when i started the year with a 2.00 average
because of great defense in a low scoring game
i continued to fancy the idea that i was
a great goaltender. & since i didn't play another
game in net for half the year, for a full half
year the stats showed that i was really exceptional.

as one of the premier goalies in the league
i was pretty surpirsed that my second game took me
immediately from best GAA to worst ( zen slap )

it was a freak game i thought.
Mike Guest's last game so he's playing at 150%
for the road...

before today's game i thought one could only improve
upon a 4.5 goals allowed per period average.

it seems that every time i expect something
the opposite happens.

the NASDAQ really impressed that upon me.

ever shot that hit me today
slid thru my legs
(like a half dozen of them)

with guys like tanner and lantz going for corners
the tendency of starting wide with the pads
opens you up
to everything down the middle.

but then everything went in around the sides as well.
there were definitely some excellent shots to the corners
Gabe had a nice one.

Sanjay joked about how it would have been better
to pull me out half way thru the period
and sadly i have to agree with him
(literally i think my save percentage was about 20%)

at least i was equally bad for both teams

both scenarios
shutting down green and black
where equally attractive agendas
but humility was the lesson from the cosmos
this evening

i had a great time

i love playing goal but tonight
i felt like a poser

my Mike Palmateer moves did't work.
at some point in the evening i actually felt jinxed

right after Alan took a weak shot from center ice
and it dropped between my legs
and i wasn't even ready to catch it

at that point i thought i was jinxed

half the team would come over to congratulate me
whenever i made a save which was quite rare.

Tanner was adamant about a "no shot" policy
where everyone would play as though they had no goalie
which tonight was the perfect assumption.

You have to remember that i was fulltime goalie
for Patrick & Mike four years ago. They have seen me
get into these funks before. It reminded me of other games
that i'd let in a half dozen soft goals
and they'd have to rally over and over again to win.
And they did, right up until the finals
when joels' and paul's team beat us

Sanjay had a perfect game (shutouts for both halves
of a game) last Monday so I was kinda fantasizing
about having a perfect game myself tonight.

By the way, congrats Sanjay, that was inspirational.
It made me delusional but i'm over it now.

Now I'm hoping there's an award for the lousiest goalie.

Carrie got it in the nose
and I thought she would miss a shift
but she didn't miss any.
and she went to the pub afterwards

which is why
The Good Ol' Boys tied The Pylons
this evening, the 17th of February,
four apiece.

what a struggle the Pylons had with Sugar
minus Adam [see a sports doctor man,
rest and see you soon; what a lift you
could have been for Sugar]

we were down two nothing and the real goalies
Hooman and Loren were shutting us all down

in the end it was a three-two game

By the way, it was great to see Jeff Silver again.
He sprain a ligament in his foot.
He had what I had over a year ago.
Aron and i were throwing a frisbee infront of my house
and Aron wanted us to throw up-and-down the street
and i insisted on sidewalk-to-sidewalk, across the street
and i while catching it i stepped on the edge of the curb
and sprained a ligament in my foot.

aron twisted his ankle
a couple of weeks ago,

lost control and went sliding into Hooman tonight

My dream is to make
Ball Hockey a life-time sport

I want to do this like those grandfathers
playing shinny on CBC's Hockey Day in Canada last week.

We get injured, we nurse ourselves back to health and
because this league is safe enough
we continue to play for decades.


Joel and Loren went at each other again
and that was unfortunate.
Josh gave them a penalty and
i thought it was a good call.
Josh isn't used to those strange outbursts
so as soon as the adrenaline was triggered
someone had to go for two minutes. I hope
Josh never gets used to it.

Its was a bit of an unusual situation because
Gerald got a penalty during the play
and Loren/Joel got a bench minor
right after the first call so that's how
it became a double minor. Sugar had to play
two men short. Since Loren and Joel
were on the same team if they both got
penalties then they'd be three men short.

Ironically,
because it was a "bench minor" that
anyone from the team could serve,
Joel was allowed to continue playing. In fact
he was the lone defenseman for the entire penalty kill.

and of course Loren stayed in net.

So after their infraction
both
ended up killing the penalty.

That's pretty weird eh?
Its feels like a higher form of justice.
It was a bit surreal.
And it got even more surreal
when they managed to do it successfully.
Together, Joel and Loren
shut down the Pylons Two-Person power play.

Aron scored what turned out to be the game winner
about 20 seconds after the double minors had expired.
For two whole minutes the Joel-Loren combination
did the most amazing thing.

Together they had put their team into the situation
and together they would dig themselves out. That was
pretty impressive. Loren stopped a dozen shots
(two were from me during my half of the powerplay).
We were all literally stonewalled.

I expected it to be a free for all.
Especially the first goal would be really easy.
Congrats to Joel and Loren for the penalty kill.

They both play better after a spat.

No really,
Loren can get quite critical of people
like he did with Jamie tonight and
i've seen it around the league

some people are prone to it

we point out each others weaknesses
in a way that sounds more like blame
than like constructive friendly criticism.

Depending on how its delivered,
criticism often backfires. And it hard not to
react defensively. As Jamie did.

and then Joel escallated the confrontation
on the pretext that he was protecting Jamie.
Originally I thought it would be
a stupid move to piss off your goalie. But
Joel and Loren have been in this league for so long
that this routine energizes them. They've probably
been through a similar confrontation over fifty times.

But this may have been the first time that they
were able to work through it by killing the double minor successfully together...

Only at the JCC.


Juranka's Corner Archive

The complete archive of anecdotes, game recaps, rants and ramblings.